Sunday, July 13, 2008

Of Ghost Towns and Gardens: How Communities are Nurtured and not Created

There's been some interesting buzz on Social Media Today about the difference between "Social Media" and "Community". Rachel Happe offers some thought-provoking insights, stating "Social media can help foster communities but social media can be limited to allowing a conversation around content...which is *not* community." As Rachel and other authors on Social Media Today point out, sharing a product rating on Amazon is "Social," but that doesn't mean Amazon is a community.

Social media tools are the building blocks for communities, but communities are more than the sum of their social media parts. If we look to real world communities as a metaphor for virtual ones, social media functions--forums, blogs, micro-blogs, ratings, profiles, friend lists, widgets, collaborative tools, and the like--are the buildings, roads, and utilities, but if no one moves in (or everyone leaves), there is no community. A site rife with Web 2.0 tools that go unused is like a ghost town--empty of life and uninviting to anyone who chances to wander in. As in the real world, a virtual community isn't characterized by its components but by its people.

A site may offer every social media tool available and still not create a successful community. The hard fact is that many community-building efforts fall short of intended goals. The reason for this is that while you can strive for a community and may succeed at a community, you cannot simply create a community. As Content Ninja says, "We cannot build a community. It just happens ... What we can do is build an infrastructure where the community can live."

How can marketers increase their chances for community-building success? Think like a gardener!

Like a gardener, marketers who wish to cultivate an online community must seek fertile ground, plant the seed, and nurture it from a seedling into a healthy, thriving organism. And like a marketer, a gardener's success is defined not by the amount of effort, the size of the plot, or the tools but by the vigor of the garden and the produce harvested from his or her plot.

Marketers can no more create a community by focusing first on social media technologies than gardeners can create a flourishing flower bed by focusing first on shovels and rakes. Before tools are secured, the gardener must craft a plan. Planting a vegetable garden for produce or a flower garden for beauty requires different tools, raw materials, processes, and effort. Communities and gardens require plans as unique as the desired outcomes.

Most importantly, neither gardens nor communities can be planted then ignored. The effort to sow plants is wasted without a commitment to help them thrive. Gardens that flourish are watered, mulched, weeded, fertilized, pruned, staked, and most of all, monitored and protected from insects, animals, blight, and frost.

Few online communities are self-sustaining, and the ones that are tend to be more like fields of weeds and wildflowers than the orderly and productive gardens that marketers seek. To create an organized, brand-oriented community requires constant investment of time and resources in the form of oversight, participation, content, marketing, promotion, community rewards, and new features to keep the experience fresh. If the community plan only goes as far as launch and then ends, it will fail; if the plan doesn't make accommodations for as much investment after launch as before, your community's chances for success are diminished.

Gardens cannot flourish just anywhere under any situation. Finding the appropriate place and conditions is important; gardeners seek the right location where soil, drainage, sun, shade, and protection are most conducive to the selected vegetation.

Likewise, marketers who seek to create communities fashioned around their products or services must evaluate if their brands provide the right circumstances to support a community. What are the brand conditions that best support the birth and growth of a community? Is your brand a fertile valley or a barren desert for your garden community? We'll explore these questions tomorrow on Experience: The Blog.

About Experience: The Blog

The world is changing rapidly, both for consumers and brands. Consumers are more empowered than ever before and traditional business models are under attack.

In an increasingly social, mobile and real-time world, brands are created not by the messages they broadcast but by the experiences they offer--ones that create empathy, build trust, earn loyalty, spur Word of Mouth, encourage collaboration, and provide ever greater value to customers in innovative ways. On this blog, we explore how brands are built and business improved via Customer Experience Management, purposeful corporate culture, social and mobile business strategy and collaborative economy models.

You are welcome to participate, criticize, praise, critique, expand, or correct the information and opinions found on this blog. Spam, off-topic, or crude comments will be deleted, but all others are welcome.

About the Author

I am Augie Ray, Research Director covering customer experience at Gartner. I conduct and publish research and advise Fortune 500 clients on the value, process, measurement and tools of customer experience. This includes topics such as Voice of the Customer (VoC), personas, customer journey maps, CX governance, and customer experiences metrics that are leading metrics of brand success.

Previously, I was Director of Global Voice of Customer Strategy for a Fortune 100 financial service company. My background includes more than 20 years of experience in digital, brand, customer experience and social media.

In the past, I led social business at USAA, a firm recognized for its innovative use of communities and social customer care within the financial service industry. I also consulted and published analysis as a Forrester analyst covering digital marketing and social media. In addition, I led a diverse $9 million agency team with specialties in digital development, digital experiential marketing and community strategy.

The future will bring a great deal of innovation that offers opportunities to organizations that are agile and willing to cannibalize their own business models (but it will severely challenge those organizations that cannot.)

The views expressed on this website/blog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.